


the glitter and shine overhead

by scramjets



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012), Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Community: space_wrapped, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Established Relationship, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-21
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2019-03-22 03:36:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13755468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scramjets/pseuds/scramjets
Summary: Jim Kirk has lived two lives.





	the glitter and shine overhead

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this fic mostly finished since 2016, but here it finally is! Written for space_wrapped 2016 for a prompt which was along the lines of "Jim Kirk is Jack Frost". This also turned out way more serious than I expected, oops.
> 
> A small portion of this -- Jack's portion -- is written in 1st person. Everything that's centred around Jim -- the bulk of the story -- is in 3rd person. If 1st person POV is really not your thing, you can quite safely skip it.
> 
> All the thanks to Quix for looking over this for me and for cheering me on. You are the actual best xx. Remaining errors and whatnot are my own.

\--

Even when I was alive, people had looked to the stars. Back then they were the basis of truth. They were fortunes and futures. They were past and present. They were dependable. They were a constant. Find the right star and you’d find a centre. A home. 

I remember watching the stars with my sister. We’d shoved ourselves in the narrow square of her bedroom window, the night a warmth on our skin that smelled of trees and rain-damp soil, and I’d make up stories about the stars. Stuff about dragons and princesses, and then princes when she got older and was interested in them, too. Sometimes she’d wonder out loud if people lived on the stars, if they sat with their brothers in their own bedrooms and ask the same questions, and I’d said, sure. I’d said, no question about it. 

I was right, I guess, considering the Man in the Moon. I told my sister later, head tipped up to the sky that, yeah, sis, there are definitely people living on the stars and I know because I met one. 

And, okay, maybe not exactly, because Manny is less flesh and bone, and more something felt instead of something touched. Just there out of reach, pinned in the highest point of the sky at the most precise angle to watch over us.

-

The thing I’ve noticed about people over the wash of years is that we never change. 

In spite of all the advances humanity has made, despite the leaps and bounds of technology and of all the things we accomplished and discovered -- we have never stopped looking up. We’d stare at the heartbeat of the stars and wonder.

It was inevitable, really, the day science reached out to grasp at the open hand of the sky. Rockets and shuttles and ships tearing away from earth, aimed for the glitter and shine overhead. The galaxy was open now, and the possibilities? They were endless.

So then the question was, what use were the Guardians? How did Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny fit in a world where the children of Earth were scattered across the galaxy? Where they were raised in spaceships knowing more about artificial gravity than the Tooth Fairy.

The answer was that we didn’t. 

We held on through tenacity alone, aware of the shrinking sliver of our own existence. 

I’d rub my hands together and feel nothing. I’d lick the tips of my fingers to chase the chill of snow, the taste of it -- basic and familiar, like rain, like blood, like salt -- difficult to define but always present. 

Except now it wasn’t, and I’d shove my hands deep in my pockets, while my heart would jam itself into my throat, making it hard to breathe. I’d been invisible once, and visibility wasn’t something I wanted to hand back.

-

Bunnymund is an angry ball of grey fuzz who, at his tallest, stands just below my knee. His whiskers quiver every couple of seconds. His nose is pink and twitchy. It’s cute.

He brings to mind the tiny black rabbit my sister had found, abandoned or lost from its family. She had raised it. Had smuggled it food from her own plate, thinking she was sly as she hid hunks of carrot and potato into the folds of her dress. 

I had offered Bunnymund a carrot remembering this, and he’d taken a sniff of it, pulled his ears back and had bitten me instead. He’s lucky I didn’t toss him off the mountain.

North dozes on a chair on the platform that once overlooked a busy factory. It’s silent now. The elves and yetis long dispersed, taking with them the smell of paint and pinewood.

It’s unnerving as it is disorienting to look over the platform and down into the emptiness of the factory. The darkness there is endless and encompassing, haunting in a way. And yet it’s also difficult to stop looking. There’s something fascinating about it, to stare into the silence and the near perfect stillness, seeing the tools, and bits and pieces of wood there in the shadows. The tins of paint, sprigs of wilting holly or pine or mistletoe, all there, waiting. 

Sandy had been the first to truly disappear, dissolving away like sand on the beach. He had waved, silent as ever as he dispersed.

Tooth’s still here -- up in the rafters somewhere, ducking in and out of the awnings with the occasional chirp. The blue-green of her feathers catch the light, so sometimes she’s nothing more than a flicker of colour. More of her feathers fall out each day.

North grows older, more weary with each passing moment, his exuberance and effervescence melting away, leaving behind nothing but shadows of the joy and curiosity that defined him.

Then there’s me, invisible and powerless with the rest of them. My hands are grey-pale. I cup them and concentrate, delve deep for the chill that once was a part of my bones and find nothing.

“We can’t live like this.” The words are hollow. I’ve lost count as to the number of times I’ve said them. “We can’t.” 

North grumbles out an agreement and I push off the rails to do a short circuit on the platform, the colours muted beneath my bare feet. 

“It’s unfair.” Because it is. “After all that. Do we just stop existing now? Is that how it works?”

All those years, too many to count, existing only on the fringe of reality, only noticed by children and now there’s none left who believe. 

“Jack,” North says.

“Huh?”

North points to the ground, to the shadow that spills across the floor. 

Pitch. 

The name blooms in my head the same way fear does in my gut. But then the shadow takes shape, the lines sliding together until the Man in the Moon’s profile sits long on the floor. My knees give way and I sink to the ground, breathing hard. 

The darkness of The Man’s shadow is different than the black of Pitch. His is warm. His is safe. Pitch was such a long-ago threat, insubstantial to what we’re facing now. I’m not even certain why he’d been my first thought.

Bunnymund sniffs at the shadow and scuttles back. Tooth descends from the ceiling, perches on North’s knee and tilts her head to look.

The Man on the Moon raises his hand and gestures.

 _Guardians_. 

His voice hums through my body. It echoes in my head. There’s an eternity in that feeling, and for a moment I’m alive again and curled up in front of a crackling fire, sleep-warm with my sister slumped against me. 

_You have served the children well. Good luck_.

-

“Do you know the cause of it?”

The lead scientist shakes her head while the other snorts and says, “With due respect, sir, if we had any idea it would’ve been sorted by now.”

“Never expected anything less,” Jim tells him. 

By his elbow, Bones shifts. 

The scientists lead them from where they’d beamed in to the compound. From the outside, it looks benign and unassuming -- a two storey building with a white render exterior and a low, dark roof. The windows glint and shine at them, dazzling across Jim’s eyes.

Closer, there are hints of what is wrong. The grass and gardens are withered and dead; on the building there are window panes missing. Mostly, it is quiet. But it’s less a cessation of sound as it is a complete void of it. Their footsteps disappear as soon as their shoes make contact with the ground. The rustle of clothing, their breathing. Nothing. There is no stirring of a breeze, no distant sound of wildlife or people going about their lives. There’s only their words, and even those cease to exist once spoken.

They reach the door, and Tetra -- the lead scientist -- gives them all a tight smile, brushing aside her companion -- Astor -- who’s trying to tell her something in furious, sibilant whispers. 

“Welcome, I guess,” she says in that artificially clipped way. Astor eases back, his expression tight. “Sorry things couldn’t be better.”

Bones tells her not to worry, that it’s fine, there’s nothing to apologise for. Tetra accepts his words with good humour and opens the door only enough for them all to slip in. The click of the lock after them disappears. It’s an odd sensation to expect noise and not hear it. It’s unbalancing, like taking a step and failing to find solid ground.

Jim sets his jaw and doesn’t react to it the same way he doesn’t react to the stillness and the silence in the corridor. Instead he glances around, takes in the heaping piles of metal and wires here and there. The laboratory had been gutted, Tetra had said, but she and Astor had painstakingly picked through the wares and made use of what they could. The result is rough, she’d told them, but serviceable.

“This way,” Tetra says.

They follow her lead, and Jim glances from the shifting colours of her hair to the windows where the thin afternoon light spills through the colour of wheat. The memory of lazy afternoons sacked out at a friend’s place, sprawled and shirtless on the too-warm floor rises like a bubble in his thoughts. It comes with the breathless relief of knowing that Frank was miles off and drunk anyway, and that he was untouchable for that moment. 

The press of Bones’s hand at the small of Jim’s back reminds him where he is, and he draws in a breath, careful to suppress his surprise at the taste of stale air and electric currents where he’d expected dry dirt and grass.

Tetra stops at another set of doors, her hand pressed spread against the surface of it. She’s a petite woman with near translucent skin and dark glossy hair that never seems to settle on a colour, glinting shades of green and pink and purple in the light.

Astor stops beside her. Taller, olive-skinned with greying hair; whipcord thin, and cranky in a way that Jim would not describe as endearing as he might other people of similar disposition. 

Jim slides a look to Bones before he can help it, but Bones is intent on the door, his expression grim, expecting the worst. 

What would be the worst to Bones, Jim wonders. Perhaps something dying behind those doors, too beyond Bones’s reach, or something mechanical and broken that this world depends on for its vitality and life. Or maybe darkness, endless darkness. Sight taken, and then touch, senses plucked until a person is left in a void. 

Tetra pushes the door open.

Computers line the far wall. Unlike the hallway and the space outside, here the lab possesses a sense of life, or at least a sense of things being alive. Things beep and flicker around them, the air hums with ambient, electronic noise, and there’s even that familiar presence of ozone saturating the air -- not just a smell, but a charge that sizzles up Jim’s spine, making him take a breath and straighten. They’re not alone here, and with that knowledge it's easier to exist. 

A bed sits in the centre of the room, and it’s crowded with cords that snake out and connect to various computers. A man is laid out on it, apparently asleep with his hands on his stomach and a relatively serene expression on his face. 

“Suresh is the only one lucky enough to be immune to the more physical effects of what’s happening. The apparent worldwide insomnia, I mean. The nightmares.” Tetra tells them this as Astor saunters across the room. She waves to the computer block. “We’re still trying to figure out why.”

As she’s speaking, Astor plucks at the sleeping man, persisting until he coaxes a reaction from him, slapping Astor’s hand away. Jim watches him do it with an odd pang in his gut. It’s sharp and sweet enough for Jim to wonder why. It feels like familiarity, but it also feels like loss. It’s confusing because he doesn’t know these people.

Suresh slowly pulls himself up. He waves his hand tiredly at Astor, who shakes his head. Suresh gestures again and Astor shrugs.

“He’s the only one immune?” Bones already has his tricorder out, beeping faintly as he approaches. 

Tetra tells him, yes, apparently, and then says, “He communicates in Universal Standard Sign.”

“Oh,” Bones goes, passing Jim a look that’s too quick for Jim to properly decipher.

Jim’s just about to ask when Bones carefully sets down his tricorder and begins to gesture. 

Suresh watches intently before he responds in kind. It’s a little too fast judging by the widening of Bones’s eyes and the way he spreads his fingers and waves his hands in the universal signal to, _stop, slow down_. Suresh tilts his head and repeats himself, signing slow and clear.

Between the four of them, they put together an initial report that Bones sends to Spock, who’s studying the immediate surrounds, taking samples and observations. By then it’s late, the day shifts around them, turning, growing dark.

-

The laboratory that Astor and Tetra had picked has no windows. It’s tucked away in the heart of the building and was once used for administrative purposes. There’s a small fridge in one corner, and a tiny bathroom off-side. 

“We sleep in the filing room,” Tetra says with a smile and a shrug, the gesture encompassing the way she’s embarrassed about having to admit it, but also challenging, daring them to make a comment. 

Jim smiles and says that it’s fine, and that he and Bones are comfortable to camp out in the main lab.

Night settles in with a finality that makes something lurch in Jim’s gut, even if he doesn’t actually _see_ night come in. He just knows, and he freezes, hands pausing over his PADD. It takes him a moment to figure the sensation out, and even then, it’s a complicated knot of anticipation and pointed awareness that’s as strangely familiar and confusing as the one he’d experienced earlier, while watching Suresh and Astor. 

He licks his lips and glances up at Bones, who’s squinting through a microscope, stopping every so often to make a note on his work. Jim stares at the bare skin of Bones’s neck, the space between his hairline and the collar of his uniform. The skin there is tender to touch, sensitive, and though he’s too far away to see it, Jim knows the small collection of freckles nestled there.

Jim returns to his PADD, trying to pick up where he had left off, but his thoughts are restless, disquiet having made a home in them.

Across the room, Astor stretches, long body arching in his chair before he rolls off it, telling them he’s calling it a night. He drags Suresh with him. He’s tall, that Astor, but for whatever reason, Jim expects him to be taller. There’s something about him that suggests it, that pulls Jim’s gaze a good half a head above Astor’s hazel eyes before he catches himself. 

Astor grins at him and Bones, the expression too sharp to be classed as friendly, and tells them to have a good night before he and Suresh disappear into the converted filing room, following Tetra who had retired earlier. He doesn’t shut the door fully behind them, and the darkness spills out of the narrow gap, claiming space where it should be light instead. 

Jim stares at it. How off-putting and strange it is, the turning of physics on its head, then he glances down to his report again and the handful of observations and hypotheses he’s typed in.

Maybe it’s the planet itself. Or something that had drifted through the galaxy and found this place acceptable. Maybe it’s in the air, something that he breathes in, something that the people breathe in, that they’re drawing into their lungs and letting disperse into their bodies. A bacteria, a virus? Or maybe something unique to this planet that makes the dark a more malleable thing, and now there’s a disturbance -- balance tipped in the favour of darkness.

Jim’s thoughts snag there. 

The dark. 

It’s like tonguing a loose tooth, of being aware of how close it is to detaching, how tender and sore it is to touch. 

Behind him, Bones makes a soft noise.

“What is it?” Jim asks, glancing over. “Did you find anything?”

“Nothing,” Bones says, after a pause. 

He pushes out of his seat and comes to him, rubbing his face, which is strained and drawn after hours spent hunched over work. Bones glances to the open door and his mouth tightens at the play of shadows. He pointedly turns his back to it and leans against Jim, tense at first, before his body melts, hands at Jim’s hips as his shoulders roll forward. Jim presses his nose to the skin below Bones’s ear, the scent of him a sudden, beautiful sharpness in the mute of this world. Jim closes his eyes and wonders at the coloured geometric patterns behind his lids.

“I have to keep recalibrating the equipment,” Bones mumbles. “What a pain in the ass.” The words vibrate between them and stirs Jim out of his momentary stupor. “Little wonder it’s taking them an age to figure it out.”

“Weird,” Jim says. He licks his lips and then says, “You think it’s something in the atmosphere that’s messing with the electronics?”

“Could be anything, Jim,” Bones sighs, withdrawing. He drags a hand through his hair and glances back to his work. 

They wrap things up not too long later and Jim kills the overhead lights. The gesture is more symbolic than he cares to admit. Bones takes in a breath that’s immediately lost to the darkness, and the cut-off sound makes Jim sets his jaw, and he finds Bones’s hand and pulls him down to lie on the cots they’d set out earlier. 

Lying there, the night bears down until Jim holds up a hand, his palm open, as if he can keep it at bay. 

After a moment, Bones shifts, reaching up to twine his fingers through Jim’s to pull him back down. Jim lets him, unable to resist the warmth of Bones’s skin, or the way he’s solid beside him, immovable. 

When Jim finally falls to sleep, it’s light and full of strange pictures. A bed abandoned in a forest, gilded cages, and teeth. Rows and rows of teeth.

-

After two days it’s easier to understand the tired slant of Tetra’s smile and the droop of Suresh’s shoulders as they run him through test after test that tell them nothing. Jim gets Astor’s preoccupation with coffee, and how there’s a glint in his eye that reminds Jim of when Bones was in the middle of his placement at the hospital on top of his academy coursework -- and how it had coincided with an exam block that one time.

Jim slides a look at Bones, who’s asking Tetra, “And it’s been like this for a month?” 

As if asking the question on different days will give a different answer. Dark shadows bracket Bones’s eyes, though he looks comparatively bright-eyed to Tetra and Astor.

“For a month,” Tetra confirms once more.

Spock’s samples -- soil, water, food, atmosphere -- had turned up nothing out of the ordinary, except that all life and vitality were being sucked dry. Everything on the planet is… not dying, exactly, though it looks like it. There is no reason or cause, everything should be thriving, but nothing is. Perhaps it is a lack of will, Spock had tried, his lips twisted as he spoke because it’s not a hypothesis based on logic. Or maybe it is, considering the circumstances. Nothing in their database compares to this.

Jim hauls himself up onto one of the lab tables and ignores the first look Bones gives him. It takes the second, something firmer a minute later, for it for dawn on Jim, and he slips back off. 

For the talk about the nature of will and nature’s will, the lack thereof and everything, it’s wrong that there’s something in Jim now that’s sparking in his veins, like he’s collected all that energy and kept it in himself. 

It’s like being a kid again, fifteen or sixteen, almost vibrating out of his skin with the want to do something, anything; and he’d been told off countless times, Jack, Jimmy, just _stop_. Stop messing around. No more tricks, okay? Left with nothing to do but bite the inside of his cheek, and pick at the loose skin of his nails, biding his time until he can jump out at his sister and scare her.

It's that all over again, and he keeps flicking his attention to Bones, to Tetra, to Suresh as if he can find a calm in the sluggishness of their movements or in the focus of their thoughts. 

Jim stares at Spock’s set shoulders, and to Astor, who slumps forward in a sort of lazy grace that makes Jim think of the sprawling dry desert ranches of Iowa during the summer, the gold-leaf sheets of grass, baked in the sun, wind heavy with the smell of grain. It’s a stark contrast to the blackness of this world and how it stagnates around them. And it's not the beautiful, temporary freeze of winter either, the greenery hidden beneath the blanket of snow, or the delight of children when they had woken to the pristine brightness of it. It’s not that.

Bones catches him later and asks, “What the hell is wrong with you,” with his words underlined in such hard concern that it undoes the tightness of them.

Jim swallows because the answer is too close to the surface but also beyond his reach, his thoughts mixed in with feelings and impressions and god knows what else. What is he meant to say? How is he supposed to put it into words that make sense. 

So Jim just tells him, “I want to know what’s going on. Are we getting any answers?”

Bones’s eyes narrow, the colour of them more green than brown in the thin aching light of the sun of the world. 

It’s coming into evening again. Spock suggests they finally look at what night is like in the open, beyond the comfort of the laboratory, and Bones agrees through grit teeth. Jim says nothing, glancing over to catch Tetra’s gaze across the room, her mouth set in a troubled line. 

Tetra had approached him while he’d taken a break in the bathroom to wash his face. There, he’d stared at his reflection in the mirror, and the glass had been spiderwebbed with cracks so that all he’d seen was his face reflected back and back and back.

“Right now we’re supposed to be celebrating the coming of the new year,” Tetra had said. Her hair was emerald then, edging into purple. “There’s a week of feasts and gift giving, each day a different focus -- one for good fortune, for prosperity, for good weather... The children adore it. I just want to give it back them.”

“We’ll sort it out,” Jim had told her, promised her, catching both of them by surprise with the hardness of his words. He’d licked his lips and continued, “We’ve got everyone on the Enterprise working on it. We’ll figure it out.”

When they stepped back into the lab, Jim had been quick to find Bones -- the broad line of his shoulders and the dip of his head as he conversed with Spock over another set of results. Seeing them there had added another layer to his certainty. They would figure this out. They would.

-

The night comes with its familiar sense of finality, sending a shiver down Jim’s spine. He forces his thoughts the other direction, because he knows darkness and silence. It comes with space and Jim knows nothing more gorgeous and promising than that (except after a few drinks and Jim will probably answer, “Bones,” because by then his thoughts are syrup, fond, difficult to control). 

But there’s an emptiness, something crushing in the hard black that draws over the planet. There’s nothing beautiful about it, nothing that Jim knows in this shade of it that makes his skin look lifeless. He stares at the back of his hands, the soft rise of veins and tendons, only vaguely aware of how Spock and Bones bracket him, their instruments beeping, taking notes and observations. It’s a testament, Jim supposes, in how well they know him, because they let him be for the moment.

“It’s freezing, goddamnit.” Bones rubs his arms as he speaks. “How is it this cold.”

“Nearly fifteen degrees below average temperature,” Spock confirms.

It’s perfect.

The night drags them further and further into the cold. Bones is a hunch on the ground, piled under coats and sheets, shivering and swearing in turns, and it gets to a point -- a minute ticking over into another, and it feels more important and monumental than it is, surely -- when Bones finally says, “I’m heading back.”

“Okay,” Jim says, then he asks Spock. “Will you be fine until I get back?”

Spock looks at him with his brow raised. “I am able to maintain my body heat for a greater length of time--” here, Bones snorts. “But I would not dissuade Dr. McCoy if he were to leave something for me to use.”

Bones stands, wincing like it hurts to move, his movements stiff and jerky as he shrugs off a layer and hands it to Spock. Jim wants to reassure him, tell him that _no, no, the cold is good_ , but he bites it back when Bones sniffles. The tip of his nose and ears are red, and even if he’s shed a layer, he still looks like a heaping of fabric with an grumpy face on top.

“I’ll be a minute,” Jim says to Spock, who looks like he wants to correct Jim for the gross underestimate.

The darkness doesn’t lift as he and Bones trek back towards the lab. Tetra had set up a light to guide them and it winks in and out, like the flicker of stars before sunrise.

“Jim,” Bones says after awhile of walking. He sounds breathless, like the night has crept into his lungs. “Jim.”

Jim looks back. Bones’s face is shadowed, and he can only make out the curve of his mouth and the arch of his cheekbone, white in the darkness. 

“We’re not getting any closer,” Bones says.

“What?”

Bones shakes his head. “We’ve been walking for ages and--” here, Jim hears the panic that Bones is trying to keep at bay. It’s there in the background, his calm flimsy, nerves translated into anger that crackle across his words. “And we’re not gettin’ any closer.”

Jim stares at him and turns back to the flickering light. It’s difficult to gauge distance.

“Let’s head back to Spock then.” 

Bones doesn’t budge an inch.

“Did you know,” he says, his words and eyes too sharp to be conversational though it’s clearly what he’s aiming for. “That when a humanoid is lost, they wander in circles thinking they’re walking a straight line?”

Jim tells him, “Should we walk in circles then, try and cancel it out?” 

Bones scowls. But he does turn back to the direction they had come, retracting footsteps in a straight line back to Spock. 

It dawns on Jim after a couple of minutes -- the crunch of dry dirt and twigs under his boots breaking its way through his thoughts -- that they’ve walked further than it would have taken to get back to the small rocky outcrop where they had left.

Bones stops and Jim stares at the back of his head and how the soft light mutes all the angles of him though his spine is a rigid line and his shoulders are pulled back. He can see the plume of Bones’s breath clouding the air. Jim flicks his attention down to Bones’s hands, clenched at his sides. 

“Jim--”

“Keep going,” Jim says.

“Jim--”

“Now, Doctor.”

The reaction is immediate. Bones takes an audible breath and strides forward.

The trees -- sparse, naked trunks, jagged and bone-white -- grow in number. Jim looks up to the thin foliage, imagines the sun of the morning breaking through to leave puddles of sunlight on the ground. It’s easy to see where the copse had been full and lush, brimming with life.

Jim steps into Bones and stumbles. “What--” 

The lake in front of them is wide and glossy with ice. The surface reflects the moon overhead, glinting in a way that makes it difficult to stare. It’s too bright, too full. Bones is talking. Jim can’t make out a word, not when he’s riveted by the lake. There’s a stirring on the surface, or maybe just below it. Something black and large, something familiar. Human shaped.

Something grabs Jim’s arm then. The grip hot and tight.

“What the hell are you doing?” Bones hisses, trying to yank him back.

Jim has one foot on the surface of the lake. The air is cold through his lungs. It hurts to inhale, like breathing in shards of ice, and it goes straight to his head, narrowing the blood vessels, muffling his hearing. He _knows this_.

The moon hangs overhead, larger than he’s ever seen even through the water. If he can just touch it. If he can reach--

“Jim--”

Jim wrenches away. Bones barks out his name in the dead night, short and sharp as Jim carefully crosses the surface of the lake. The ice sighs underfoot, relieved in a way.

“Damnit, Jim.” Bones’s voice is too pleading to be threatening, thin, coming from far away. “If the ice breaks don’t think I’ll jump in after you.”

“Don’t,” Jim says. 

The word registers, and with it comes the realisation of what he’s doing. 

Jim freezes, suddenly aware of many different things at once: the cold, the fragile ice underfoot and the rush of water beneath that, the moon overhead, too big and bright. There’s a memory of something he can’t quite grasp. Something immediately there and also far away. Slowly, Jim lifts his hands and presses them to his head.

Bones calls for him again, and Jim turns around and carefully picks his way back. He doesn’t take his eyes off Bones even once.

Bones grabs him when he’s on solid ground, his frustration and anger making him hot to the touch. Jim bunches his hands in the back of his uniform, physically there but in his head he’s back on the ice.

-

The morning sun breaks over the horizon with reluctance.

Jim lifts a hand to shield his eyes from the wan brightness, white and sterile instead of yellow and warm. It’s different from when he was young and living on farmstead, when he’d wake up early or stay up late enough to catch the sun as it steadily climbed into the pre-dawn sky. 

Sometimes he’d wake up his sister, too, and they’d watch it together, legs slung out the window of the house. She’d ruck her blanket over their shoulders, the material worn and warm, and they’d sit there and soak it all in until life stirred through the house.

A chill breaks over Jim’s skin. He could blame it on the cold. He remembers Spock standing in the black night, tricorder in hand, informing them of the 15 degree drop of the usual temperature. 

Tetra had also mentioned it. She’d made a point of it, the out-of-ordinary cold.

Jim finalises the data he’s collected and heads back inside the building, slipping into the laboratory with the bed in the middle and the ribbons of cords that pour out. Bones stumbles out of the bathroom a second later with his face and hair wet, like he’s stuck his head under the tap. 

It makes Jim soften. “You’re starting to look like you belong here.”

Bones scowls, but the effect of it is ruined in the way he rubs his bloodshot eyes, and how he runs his hands through his wet hair. Jim fixes him a coffee. Bones drains it like it’s water.

“You look tired,” Bones says, voice rough over the clatter of his mug. ”You’re getting them too?”

In the filing room, there’s a stirring, Tetra and Astor coming to wake. Suresh had been up for ages, the only one who’d slept well.

“Huh?” Jim says.

Bones gives him a look. “Bad dreams. Nightmares.”

Nightmares. A single word instead of two.

Jim thinks. He had dreamt of a low slung house nestled on the outskirts of the village. There’s a fireplace in the middle of it and a thick wooden table, heavily rutted, placed towards the left hand side of the room. He knows that towards the back are the bedrooms, and that his parents share one and he used to share the other with his sister, back when he was little, only he’s taken to sleeping near the fire on the pallet these days. He knows the cool rush of winter, and the searing heat of summer. He knows the creep of ice through his lungs and in his veins, the patterns it makes on clear glass, and the sting of sleet on skin. None of these are nightmares.

“I’ve had dreams,” he says.

Tetra and Astor stumble in. Jim greets both, aware of the way Bones hesitates before addressing them, and the day proceeds from there. 

When Tetra boots up her computer, she jerks out her chair with such an energy that the entire room freezes and stares. 

“He’s coming.”

Before Jim can say anything, Astor asks, eager, “When?”

Tetra beams. “Today.”

-

The memories of an entire other life bursts though Jim’s head the second the man steps through the doors. Jim isn’t sure if the jerk in his gut and the sting of his eyes are because he wants to be sick or cry or laugh. Maybe it’s all three. 

The room crackles with the same energy that pulses through Jim’s bones, and he knows that they’re experiencing the same thing. It's there on their faces -- the way North blinks at him, how Tooth just stares at him, her eyes wide; how Bunnymund is sputtering something that he can’t make out behind them, and how Suresh has his hands frozen in mid-greeting.

Jim fixes on a smile and extends a hand.

“Dr. Klaus,” he says. “I’m Captain Kirk of the Enterprise, and this is Dr. McCoy. We’ve been sent by the Federation to help you get to the bottom of this.”

Dr. Klaus is a big man with a heavy beard. He’s tucked in a suit, looks chipper for his age, with laugh lines branching from the corners of his eyes. He doesn’t take his hand. 

Everything around them hums, and there’s the popping of circuits breaking, overloaded with unfocused energy. Jim hisses in a breath when the lights flicker overhead, and he clasps his hands into fists and is surprised to find them empty. Where's his-- his--

His what.

There’s a flash then. An instant of perfect brightness and clarity that comes with a lightning strike, of him wielding his staff, flinging all the power he possesses to a pouring void of black--

“ _Sandy_!--” He’s calling, voice lost beneath the braying of the Night Mares.

“ _Jack_!--”

“This way,” Bones says, hand clasped around Jim’s upper arm. 

Jim stumbles backwards, keeps stumbling until they’re in the empty hallway. To the end of it, one of the hanging lights swings back and forth on its cords, disturbed by something invisible. He has to drag his eyes away. 

Bones’s expression, when Jim finally looks, is of barely checked anger. “We’re calling off the mission--”

“No--”

“We’re calling off the mission,” Bones says, firm. “You are going on mandatory rest and evaluation--”

“Bones--”

“Spock will take over--”

“Damnit, Bones--”

“Don’t you damnit me.” Bones says it through clenched teeth. Then he stops and all the hard anger disappears. “What the hell is going on?” he asks. “What is going on?”

“I’m not sure,” Jim says. “I don’t know.”

But he does know, doesn’t he? He just doesn’t know how to say it when he looks at Tetra or Suresh, or Klaus, and sees someone else there. Another shade of that person, looking at them through the haze of the years, the ripple of time, and it makes his throat dry, makes his stomach clench, because he’s also remembering what it was like to be alone. His heart beating, _I’m here, I’m here, I’m present, I’m here_ , while everyone had walked past him, walked through him, their eyes never finding him because he didn’t exist.

The lights flicker and die and the corridor is plunged into darkness. Jim cups his hands and squints into the hollow of his palms where the shadows pool, then he closes his eyes and concentrates on the cold that’s knitted into his bones. 

Bones takes in a breath, startling Jim’s eyes back open. There’s a swirl of light and snow in palms, shifting and curling. 

Jim shivers, because his clothes are still wet from the lake--

\-- _Frank is going to kill him_ \--

\-- hair plastered to his forehead, sticking to his cheeks --

\-- _that car was an antique_ \--

\-- the water solidifies to ice under his feet --

“Jack,” someone says. “ _Jack_ \--”

-

“Jack, I’m scared.”

“I know, I know,” I say, careful not to let her know, me, too. Careful not to let her know, I have no idea what to do.

The ice crackles around us, and I shackle everything down. “But you’re going to be alright. You’re not going to fall in. Uh--” 

I cast around, searching. Excitement leaps at the sight of my staff, at the hook on the top of it, but the hope is gutted by distance. It’s almost the entire length of the lake away. I lick my lips. 

Under the thin surface of ice, the water is dark and restless. I look at it first, and then back up to my sister who’s still frozen where she stands with the toes of her skates pointed inward so that she doesn’t slip. 

She’s growing up quickly, more liable to throw her fist at me when I leap out at her from behind the log pile than to scream. She’ll get you back, our mother says endlessly. You wait, Jack. 

And she is. She’d stuffed my pillows with acorns just the other night, and when I’d dug them all out, I’d found more at the foot of my bed under the covers. I’d never been so proud of her, and I look at her now, every detail -- how tall she’s getting, how long her hair is, how she looks just a little more like our father than our mother. I take it all in and smile.

“We’re going to have a little fun instead,” I tell her.

“No, we’re not!”

I hold out my hands, and the ice grinds and groans with the slight movement. My heart hammers in my throat, making it difficult to swallow and to talk, but I manage somehow, voice steady in spite of it all.

“Would I trick you?”

“Yes!” Her terror makes her breathless, it cracks the end of her words, and it takes everything to push back the guilt, to keep in character, to keep smiling, even when she says, “You always play tricks!” 

-

North is the first to speak, and when he does, it’s a single word. “Pitch.”

“What?” Bones says, the question short, sharp, stripped back in his exhaustion and confusion.

Jim casts him a glance before he looks back to North. “It’s Pitch.” 

Saying it is like a weight lifted off his body.

Bones swivels to him as Tooth darts across the room to throw herself into his arms. Jim’s only half-expecting it. She’s heavier in this body, and he staggers under her weight until they fall to a heap on the floor. 

“Oh, no,” she says, untangling herself to stand. “I’m so sorry. I forgot.”

Jim waves off her apology, takes her offered hand and stands, wincing.

“Mate,” Bunnymund’s saying. “I knew the second North got here.”

“Really?” Jack goes. “Took you that long?”

A touch at his shoulder pulls Jim back, and he blinks at Bones.

“Please,” Bones says. 

-

They sit on the cots that Tetra and her team had set up in the small filing room. In the corner, there’s a pile of books, in another corner, there’s a laptop. It feels like it should be cramped and uncomfortable, but it isn’t. 

Neither of them fidget, and for once the restless energy in Jim has settled. He just doesn’t know where to start, much less how to start.The silence rings between them until Bones breaks it, shifting where he sits, taking in a breath, “I’ve seen a lot of inexplicable things happen.” 

Bones pauses, clearly considering the path of his words. “I’m not just talking about physics or biology, or whatever branch of science you want to use. I’m not Spock, so I’m able to believe that there are things that happen that don’t follow logic. Things I can’t dream up because my sorry ass ain’t that imaginative. You remember that planet with the sentient rocks, right?”

The thin smile on Bones's fades and he stops a moment before continuing. “Because, y’know, there’s also the other stories. There are other planets with their own stories. Legends. Myths. Rituals. I’ve told you, haven’t I, the things my grandmother used to do to keep--” Bones waves his hand, indicating to the empty space above where they sit. “ _Them_ happy. The things she believed in.”

All the tense lines in Jim’s body give, and he sags where he sits. He drags in a breath, makes certain that he feels like himself before he shoots Bones a smile and says, “Ghosts? Bones, are you talking about ghosts?”

“For the love of--” Bones reins it in and sighs, glancing to the door that separates them from the laboratory. Jim’s momentarily aware of the murmur of voices beyond it, the trill of Tooth’s voice that Bunnymund responds to in his familiar broad accent. North laughs over them both.

Bones regards him again. His brow is creased. “Jim... Who is Jack?”

The smile on Jim’s face dies, though he tries to scrounge it back. 

“Jack is— he was another life, I guess. I’m not sure how it works.” Jim stops. He knows how it sounds to say it out loud. “You remember those old Earth stories. With Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.” 

Jim thinks of Bunnymund who is also Astor, everything about him sharp and mean, all his softness saved for the children.

Bones nods, his expression even. Jim wishes that Bones wasn’t so good at that.

“There was also the Tooth Fairy. And Jack Frost, who brought winter.” There’s a slight pause, barely perceptible though he’s certain that Bones has noticed regardless. “There was also Pitch. The bogeyman. It only really works if people believe, and there must be enough of a belief here that’s given Pitch his powers. I’m not sure, but he needs to be stopped either way, before it gets worse than this.”

“What do you need to do,” Bones asks.

Jim thinks of the moon, thinks of Tooth, and Sandy, Bunnymund and North. He thinks of the winter that sits in the marrow of his bones and how it aches to grow. He thinks of his sister. He thinks of being Bones never able to touch him again.

“They need Jack,” he says, then he hardens. “But this is my life. Bones. _Mine_. He was alone. For two hundred years no one heard him, no one touched him, no one saw him. Only the others.” Jim doesn’t bother clarifying who the others are, figures that it’s obvious. 

“And even then they didn’t bother with him until The Man in the Moon made him a Guardian, like one of them. Bones,” he says, finally putting into words the most terrifying part, and it’s not the darkness, or Pitch, or the people waiting for him beyond that door. “ _What if I don’t come back_.”

His chest is tight and Bones grabs him, rough as he yanks him close. Jim curls his fingers in the familiar texture of Bones’s uniform. He breathes in the smell of him, so familiar that it may as well be a part of Jim, too.

“I can’t,” Jim says. Bones sweeps his open hand on his back, a swathe of warmth that burns. “Bones, I--”

Jim stops, because there’s a stirring in the distance, something dangerous and dark.

“Jim,” Bones says. “I have no idea what’s going on, but I trust you. Whatever you decide. If you want to go over everything again with me and Spock and figure out a way around it, then let’s go back out there, contact Spock and do it. 

“If you want to go into this with them. If it’s something that you know will work, and that will give these people back their lives, then do it. And then come back.” Bones pulls back, voice savage when he says, “Don’t think I dragged you back from death to let you go so goddamn easy, Kirk.”

Jim looks at him, and Bones returns his gaze until he breaks to kiss him. Like everything else about Bones, it’s hot and it burns Jim from the inside out. Jim wants to climb into it and stay there, but he can’t, not right now.

Bones cups his face once they break apart, keeps them close so that they share breath. “Go do it and come back. I’ll be here.”

Jim knows that Bones will be, because Bones is his centre, his home. Past and present, he’s all of it. And so he closes his eyes, and lets himself sink into the familiarity of the ice.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! :D


End file.
